PBELL DODGSON, C.B.E. 


M. KNOEDLER & CO.,, INc. 
I4 EAST 57TH STREET 
NEW YORK 
1928 


as HiGrecht Durer Lonterfeyeinfeinemaler sw 
Oe L V I. Saree. 


ALBRECHT DURER, AGED 56 
Size of the original woodcut 1234 x 10 inches 
From a proof, in the second state, of three, before the 
monogram of Diirer and the date 1527, 
in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


DURER’S WOODCUTS 


BY 


CAMPBELL DODGSON, C.B.E. 


Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British 

Museum. Author of the Catalogue of German and 

Flemish Woodcuts in the British Museum and 
Honorary Secretary of the Durer Society 


M. KNOEDLER & CO, Inc. 


PABBAST 5710 STREET 
NEW YORK 


1928 


Dtrer’s Woonpcuts, by CAMPBELL DopGson, 
Number Three of The Knoedler Booklets, is reprinted 
from Tur Print Cotzecrors’ QuarTERLY (VoL- 
uME Two, NuMBER 2, pp. 148-179) by permission of 
the Publishers, ]. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. 

It is not for sale, is printed for presentation only 
and to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of 
Diurer’s death—April 6th, 1528. 

The illustrations (with the exception of Taz Vir- 
GIN Mary wits LILITH BENEATH HER Feet by the 
Master of the Playing Cards) are made from proofs in 
the possession of M. Knoedler &% Co., Inc. 


DURER’S WOODCUTS 
BY CAMPBELL DODGSON, C.B.E. 


HE first decade of the twentieth century lies not 
4 (ies far behind us, but perhaps it is not too 
soon to assert that one of its marked features, in the 
retrospect of a print-lover, is a great revival or exten- 
sion of interest in every form of engraving among 
cultivated people who are not specialists. Increased 
attention has been paid, among other things, to the 
German woodcuts of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies, which used to be rather despised by the old- 
fashioned nineteenth-century collector, with a few 
enlightened exceptions, as rough and ugly old things 
which were curious as specimens of antiquity or in- 
structive as illustrations of the life and religion of 
the generations that produced them, but were not to 
be taken very seriously as works of art. That esti- 
mate is being revised. A generation no longer blind- 
ed to the merits of primitive art by the worship of 
Raphael and the antique is ever tapping fresh sources 
of delight and enriching itself by the perception of 


5 


beauty where its fathers saw nought but the gro- 
tesque and quaint. It is not surprising, indeed, that 
German art has made slower progress than Italian 
on the road to popularity. Even the primitives, on 
the south side of the Alps, shared in the winning 
grace and suavity of the old Mediterranean culture, 
while their brethren in the North, the French ex- 
cepted, were indisputably more rugged and barbar- 
ous in draughtsmanship and painting, and few of 
their engravers, except Schongauer, can vie with the 
Florentines if their achievements are judged by the 
test of formal beauty. But it is wonderful how, in 
the North, now and again, art could suddenly blos- 
som and ripen under the creative impulse of an in- 
novator, whose successors, rather than the pioneer 
himself, lay themselves open to the charge of angu- 
larity and uncouthness. The perfection of the very 
earliest printed books is a commonplace. Less gen- 
erally known, perhaps, is the great beauty to which 
the earliest of all the German engravers known to 
us at all as a personality, though not by name, was 
capable of attaining. The ‘‘Master of the Playing- 
Cards,” who was at work about 1430-40, produced 
6 


THE KNIGHT AND MAN-AT-ARMS, 1495-1498 
Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 
From a proof, on Small Crown paper, 
in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


FEET 


By the Master of the Playing Cards 
Size of the original engraving 231 x 168 mm. 
“One of the most splendid and mature creations of 
the fifteenth century.”’ CAMPBELL DopGson 


From the impression (unique?) in the Biblioteca del 
Seminario, Padua 


work of extraordinary charm, not only in some of 
the figures, animals and flowers of the playing-cards 
themselves, but especially in the large engraving of 
the Virgin Mary with the human-headed serpent, or 
Lilith, beneath her feet, which is one of the most 
splendid and mature creations of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. Then, again, the early book illustrators of 
Augsburg and Ulm, in the seventies, when the use 
of blocks for such a purpose had only recently come 
in, produced woodcuts that were never surpassed by 
any successors in their simple and direct vivacity and 
strength, with the utmost economy of line. But the 
real beauty of some of the much earlier single wood- 
cuts, illustrating, chiefly, the legends of Our Lady 
and the Saints, has been much less generally appre- 
ciated. They are very rare, and most of them repose, 
in a seclusion seldom disturbed, in their boxes in the 
great European print-rooms or even in Monastic li- 
braries. They are only beginning to be reproduced, 
and they are rarely exhibited. But such an exhibition 
of the earliest German woodcuts as was held at Ber- 
lin in the summer of 1908 was truly a revelation. 
The soft and rounded features, the flowing lines of 


9 


the drapery, in the prints of the generation before 
sharp, broken folds were introduced under the in- 
fluence of the Netherlands, have something of the 
charm of the Far Eastern art, and the gay coloring 
with which most of the prints were finished has 
often a delightfully decorative effect when they are 
framed and hung at a proper distance from the eye. 
Such praise is due, of course, only to some of the 
choicer examples; there are plenty of fifteenth-cen- 
tury woodcuts in which the line is merely clumsy 
and the coloring merely gaudy, but these are more 
often products of the last quarter of the century than 
of its beginning or middle. It would not be true to 
say that the advance of time brought with it prog- 
ress and perfection in the woodcutter’s art; on the 
contrary, the first vital impulse spent itself all too 
soon, and gave way to thoughtless and unintelligent 
imitation. 

What was the state of things when Direr ap- 
peared upon the scene? He did so long before the 
close of the fifteenth century, for his first authenti- 
cated woodcut is an illustration to St. Jerome’s Epis- 
tles, printed at Basle in 1492. Whether he or an un- 

10 


<< WAY 
a aa = — 
2 Le aS Ss 3 
ite aS ee Seat 


Kp) 


y s 22. 1 -O —-_ 4 
(be EOE og ee 


es 


THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. CATHERINE OF 


ALEXANDRIA, 1495-1498 
Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 


From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 


M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


THE HOLY FAMILY WITH THE THREE HARES, 1495-1498 
Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 


From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


known artist is responsible for a large number of 
other illustrations produced at Basle about 1493-95, 
is a question about which no consensus of opinion 
has been formed, and this is not the place to discuss 
it. All the woodcuts that the world knows and es- 
teems as Diirer’s were produced at Nuremberg after 
his return from the first Venetian journey (1495). 
Let us see, for a moment, how they stand compari- 
son with what had gone before them. The older 
woodcuts are nearly all anonymous, and if they bear 
any signature, it is that of a woodcutter (Form- 
schneider or Briefmaler) who was a craftsman al- 
lied to the joiner, rather than the painter. Just before 
Diirer’s time the painter begins to make his appear- 
ance on the scene as a designer of woodcuts. There 
are a few isolated cases in which the almost univer- 
sal rule of anonymity is broken, and we learn from 
the preface to a book the name of the artist who de- 
signed the illustrations. Breydenbach’s ‘““Travels to 
the Holy Land” (Mainz, 1486) was illustrated by 
woodcuts after Erhard Reuwich, or Rewich, a na- 
tive of Utrecht, who had accompanied the author on 
his journey, and the immense number of woodcuts 


E3 


in the “‘Nuremberg Chronicle” by Hartmann Sche- 
del (1493) were the work of the painters Wohlge- 
muth and Pleydenwurff; to whom the much finer 
illustrations of the “Schatzbehalter” (1491) may 
also safely be attributed. It is now almost univer- 
sally believed that the “Master of the Hausbuch,” 
one of Diurer’s most gifted predecessors in the art of 
engraving on copper, was also a prolific illustrator, 
the principal work assigned to him being the nu- 
merous illustrations in the “Spiegel der mensch- 
lichen Behaltnis” printed by Peter Drach at Speyer 
about 1478-80. There are speculations, more or less 
ill-founded, about the illustrators of a few other 
woodcut books of the fifteenth century, but I be- 
lieve it is true that the first book after those already 
named in which the artist’s name is settled beyond 
doubt is Diirer’s “Apocalypse” of 1498. 

Dr. Naumann, the editor of a recent facsimile of 
the cuts in the Speyer book just mentioned, claims 
for the ‘“‘Hausbuchmeister” that he was the first 
painter, or painter-engraver, who attempted to get 
the most out of the craftsmen employed in cutting 
blocks from his designs. That is rather a speculative 


14 


From The Apocalypse, 1498 
Size of the original woodcut 15% X Il inches 
From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


SEVEN HEADS AND TEN HORNS 


From The Apocalypse, 1498 
Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 


From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


opinion, and the woodcuts in question are not, from 
the technical point of view, superior to many other 
contemporary illustrations. But there can be no ques- 
tion that Durer effected an immense reform in this 
respect, and carried the technique of wood-engrav- 
ing to a perfection unparalleled in its previous his- 
tory. Not by his own handiwork, for there is no rea- 
son to suppose that Durer ever cut his blocks him- 
self. All the evidence points, on the contrary, to his 
having followed the universal practice of the time, 
according to which the designer drew the composi- 
tion in all detail upon the wood block, and em- 
ployed a professional engraver to cut the block, pre- 
serving all the lines intact, and cutting away the 
spaces between them, so that the result was a fac- 
simile of the drawing as accurate as the craftsman 
was capable of making it. Durer set his engravers, 
we may be sure, a harder task than they had ever 
had to grapple with before, and he must have suc- 
ceeded in gradually training a man, or group of 
men, on whom he could rely to preserve his draw- 
ing in all its delicacy and intricate complexity. This 
was a work of time, and perfection was not reached 


Sy 


till after Durer’s return from his second journey to 
Venice, when a great increase of refinement on the 
technical side becomes noticeable, culminating in 
that extraordinary performance, the Holy Trinity 
woodcut of 1511. But even on the large fifteenth- 
century blocks, the “Apocalypse,” the earlier por- 
tion of the “Great Passion” and the contemporary 
single subjects, much cross-hatching is used and the 
space is filled with detail to an extent hitherto un- 
known. Without ever losing sight of the general 
decorative effect, the telling pattern of black and 
white, Diirer put in a vast amount of interesting 
little things, with the conscientiousness and care that 
characterized everything he did, and every detail of 
the leaves of a thistle or fern, or of the elaborate or- 
nament, birds and flowers and foliage and rams’ 
heads, on the base of a Gothic candle-stick, had to 
be reproduced so that the crisp clearness of the orig- 
inal pen-drawing lost nothing of its precision. ‘The 
result was a work so perfectly complete in black and 
white, as it stood, that nobody ever thought of col- 
oring it, and that in itself was a great innovation 
and advance. The fifteenth-century “Illuminirer,” 


18 


THE HOLY TRINITY, I511 

Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11% inches 
‘“A cut which surpasses all Durer’s other work on 
wood in technical accomplishment.”’ 
CAMPBELL Doncson 


From a proof in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


WITH LAMB’S HORNS 


From The Apocalypse, 1498 
Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 inches 
From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


or the patron who gave him his orders, seems to 
have had an instinctive respect for excellent and 
highly finished work in black and white, which 
made him leave it alone. Line-engravings of the fif- 
teenth century are very frequently found colored, 
but they are usually quite second-rate specimens, and 
prints by the great men, such as the “Master E. S.” 
and Schongauer, were respected and left alone. But 
such consideration was not often shown to wood- 
cuts, which were frequently colored, especially when 
used as illustrations, well into the sixteenth century. 
It was very rarely, however, that any illuminator 
laid profane hands on anything of Durer’s, woodcut 
or engraving, and when he did so the result is stupid 
and disagreeable, for it is always the work of a later 
generation, out of touch with Durer’s genius. 

It may be said that if Durer and his contempora- 
ries did not cut their own blocks, the woodcuts are 
not original prints by the masters themselves. It 
must be conceded that they are not original prints 
quite in the same sense as engravings and etchings, 
in which the whole work was carried out upon the 
plate by the masters’ own hand, but it would be a 

oi 


mistake to describe them as examples of reproduc- 
tive engraving. Such a thing as a reproductive en- 
graving was, in fact, unknown in the Germany of 
Diurer’s time. A design originally projected in one 
medium might be reproduced in another in a case 
where an engraving by Schongauer, or Meckenen, 
or Direr himself, was copied by some inferior wood- 
cutter, as an act of piracy, for a bookseller who was 
too stingy to pay an artist to draw him a new Virgin 
or Saint for his purpose. But it would never have oc- 
curred to anyone to reproduce an engraving or wood- 
cut, a picture or drawing, done for its own sake, as 
a separate and complete work of art. Reproductions 
of pictures scarcely exist in German art of the six- 
teenth century; they are commoner in the Venetian 
School, among the woodcutters influenced by Ti- 
tian, and Rubens established the practice once for all 
by his encouragement of engraving from his pic- 
tures, a century after Diirer’s time. But when wood- 
cutting was taken up by the German painters, with 
Diirer as their leader, for the purpose of circulating 
their compositions at a cheaper price than they could 
charge for engravings of their own, they always had 
oa) 


\ 4 fi 
Nr 
‘I 


CHRIST BEARING THE CROSS 


From The Great Passion, 1497-1500 
Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11% inches 
From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


From The Great Passion, 1497-1500 
Size of the original woodcut 15% x 11 ¥% inches 
From a proof, on Reichsapfel paper, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


a strictly legitimate object according to the canons 
of graphic art. Rarely working even from sketches, 
never from a work already finished in another me- 
dium, they drew the subjects intended for printing 
directly upon the block in a technique adapted for 
the purpose, avoiding such combinations of lines as 
the most skilful craftsmen would be unable to cut. 
Their actual handiwork was preserved upon the sur- 
face of the block, much as in the modern original 
lithograph the artist’s actual work survives upon the 
surface of the stone; if it was in any way disfigured, 
as often, no doubt, it was, that must be set down to 
failure on the cutter’s part. Anything original that 
the cutter puts in, any swerving that accident or 
clumsiness permits him to make from the line fixed 
by the painter’s pen for him to follow, is a blemish, 
and the best woodcuts of Durer, Holbein, Baldung, 
Cranach, Burgkmair and the rest of their genera- 
tion have no such blemishes. They are strictly auto- 
graphic: the lines that the artist’s pen has traced re- 
main and are immortalized by the printing-press; the 
white spaces, also limited by his controlling will and 
purpose, result from the mere mechanical cutting 


me 


away of blank wood that any neat-handed workman 
can perform. So when we speak of the woodcuts of 
Millais, Rossetti, Whistler, Walker, Pinwell, Sandys 
and the rest of the ““Men of the Sixties” we know 
that the blocks were cut by Dalziel or Swain, but 
every good print is none the less what the designer 
meant it to be, and what none but himself could have 
made it. 

Of Diirer’s woodcutters, unluckily, we know noth- 
ing till the comparatively late period when he had 
been enlisted in the service of the Emperor Maxi- 
milian, whose imposing, but somewhat ponderous 
and pedantic, Triumphal Arch was cut from the de- 
signs of Diirer and his school by Hieronymus An- 
dread. There is much more information about the 
Augsburg cutters than about those of Nuremberg, 
and there is no single artist in the latter city whose 
work is so strongly marked out by its excellence 
from that of his contemporaries as was Lutzelburg- 
er’s, who cut Holbein’s “Dance of Death.” 

To understand Durer’s woodcuts aright, it is nec- 
essary to get to know them in their chronological se- 
quence. In conservative collections, where they are 


26 


AAA 


THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE 
From The Life of the Virgin, 1504-1505 
Size of the original woodcut 115% x 8% inches 
From a proof, on High Crown paper, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


From The Life of the Virgin, 1510 
Size of the original woodcut 1154 x 8% inches 
From a proof, on High Crown paper, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


arranged by order of subject, on the system of 
Bartsch, the student is continually confused by the 
juxtaposition of quite incongruous pieces, placed to- 
gether merely because “‘Jéréme,”’ for instance, comes 
in alphabetical order next after “Jean.”’ The British 
Museum collection has been arranged for more than 
ten years past in chronological order, which, in 
Direr’s case, is unusually easy to determine with 
approximate accuracy, because his methodical turn 
of mind caused him to be fond of dates, while the 
undated pieces can be fitted in without much difh- 
culty by the evidence of style. The justification of 
the system became all the more apparent when the 
woodcuts were exhibited for a few months in 1909, 
and fell naturally into consistent and coherent groups 
upon the screens, while separated, as a matter of 
practical convenience, from the engravings. Since 
then two even more interesting experiments have 
been made, in exhibitions made at Liverpool and 
Bremen, toward a reconstruction of Diirer’s entire 
life-work in its chronological sequence, his pictures, 
drawings, engravings and woodcuts — represented 
mainly, of course, by reproductions—being merged 


2) 


in a single series. That is a timely warning against 
the risks of excessive concentration upon one single 
side of his many activities, but here we will not di- 
gress further from the woodcuts, which are at pres- 
ent our theme. 

The series opens magnificently with the group of 
large and stately woodcuts, abounding in vitality 
and dramatic invention, produced by Direr between 
1495 and 1500. These include the fifteen subjects 
of the “Apocalypse,” the seven early subjects of the 
“Great Passion” (not completed until 1510-11) and 
seven detached pieces uniform with the two series 
already named in dimensions and style, but inde- 
pendent of them in subject. The blocks of the ma- 
jority of these single pieces are now, by the way, in 
an American collection, that of Mr. Junius S. Mor- 
gan, but they have suffered sadly from the ravages 
of the worm. There is a certain exaggeration and 
over-emphasis of gesture in the ““Apocalypse”’ wood- 
cuts, but Diirer never invented anything more sub- 
lime than the celebrated Four Riders or the St. Mi- 
chael defeating the Rebel Angels, which I regard as 
at least equal to the subject more frequently praised. 


30 


AN) 


Nir, AM 


1 eg 


K( 


SSS SS US 


ABW YO 


SS 


Bee co 


~~ 


JOHN, I510 
Size of the original woodcut 416 x 334 inches 
From a proof in the possession of 
ebiyc: 


ST 
Knoedler & Co 


e 


M 


CHRIST ON THE CROSS BETWEEN THE VIRGIN AND 


ginal woodcut 4% x 3% inches 


f, formerly in the A. Artaria Collection, 


CAIN AND ABEL, I511 


Wy 


st 


in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


Size of the ori 


From a proo 


Superb, too, is the Angels Restraining the Four 
Winds. The landscape at the foot of St. John’s Vi- 
sion of the Four-and-Twenty Elders (B. 63) is a 
complete picture by itself, and there is a rare early 
copy of this portion alone, which is itself a beautiful 
print, and doubtless the earliest pure landscape wood- 
cut in existence. Samson and the Lion, the mysteri- 
ously named Ercules and Knight and Man-at-arms, 
often described as its companion, and the Martyr- 
dom of St. Catherine are among the finest of the 
single subjects. After this tremendously impressive 
group, there is for a time a certain relaxation of en- 
ergy, or rather Durer was more bent on other things, 
especially engraving. To the years 1500-04 belong a 
number of woodcuts of Holy Families and Saints, 
much smaller than the “Apocalypse,” and rather 
roughly cut. Some critics have wished to dismiss one 
or another of them as pupil’s work, but for this there 
is really no justification. Then comes another very 
good period, that of the “Life of the Virgin,” of 
which set Diirer had finished seventeen subjects be- 
fore he left for Venice in 1505, while the Death of 
the Virgin and The Assumption were added in 


a3 


1510, and the frontispiece in 1511, when the whole 
work came out as a book, assuredly one of the most 
desirable picture-books the world has ever seen! It is 
impossible to weary of the beautiful compositions, 
and details drawn with such loving care, the tender 
and homely sentiment, the humor, even, displayed 
in the accessory figures of The Embrace of Joachim 
and Anne, the beer-drinking gossips in the Birth of 
the Virgin, where the atmosphere of St. Anne’s 
chamber is sweetened by an angelic thurifer, and the 
merry group of angelic children playing around Jo- 
seph, bent on his carpenter’s business, while their 
elders keep solemn watch round Mary at her distaff 
and the Holy Child in the cradle. We find land- 
scapes at least as beautiful as those in Diuirer’s best 
engravings in the pastoral background of the An- 
nunciation to Joachim and the mountainous distance 
of the Visitation. The architectural setting of the 
Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the tall 
cross held aloft, with the happiest effect on the com- 
position, by the Apostle kneeling on the left in 
Mary’s death-chamber, are among the memorable 
features of the set. 


34 


MARY MAGDALEN 


CHRIST APPEARING TO ST 


I510 
7 inches 


1508- 


, 


From The Little Passion 
Size of the original woodcut 5 x 3 


From an impression 


with 


> 


? 


= 
— 
vay 
Lo | 
~S 
Ba 
Boe 
a ae 
0G 
eecee 
2 O 
eae 
vo od 
ashy 
oe 
q-= 5 
nae eS 
aoe =: 
wal 


Latin text 
M 


THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS 


From The Little Passion, 1508-1510 
Size of the original woodcut 5 x 37% inches 
From an impression, in the first edition, 1511, with 
Latin text, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc, 


Beautiful again, especially in the proofs, is the 
next and latest of the long sets, the “Little Passion,” 
consisting of thirty-six subjects and a title-page, be- 
gun in 1509 and finished, like all the other books, 
in 1511. But it has not the monumental grandeur 
of the earlier religious sets, and there is an inevitable 
monotony about the incessant recurrence of the fig- 
ure of Our Lord, when the history of the Passion is 
set forth in such detail. The most original and im- 
pressive subjects, in my opinion, are Christ Appear- 
ing to St. Mary Magdalen and the next following it, 
The Supper at Emmaus. 

The years 1510 and 1511 were the most prolific 
of all, and witnessed the publication of other con- 
nected pieces, the Beheading of John the Baptist and 
Salome bringing the Baptist’s Head to Herod, and 
then the three little woodcuts, Christ on the Cross, 
Death and the Soldier,and The Schoolmaster, which 
Direr brought out on large sheets at the head of his 
own verses, signed with a large monogram at the 
end of all. The single sheets of 1511 include, be- 
sides the marvelous Trinity already mentioned, the 


large Adoration of the Magz, the Mass of St. Greg- 
37 


ory, a St. Jerome in his Cell, which is the best, after 
the celebrated engraving of 1514, of Direr’s re- 
peated versions of that delightful subject; the Can 
and Abel, which is one of the great rarities; two 
rather unattractive Holy Families; and the beautiful 
square Saint Christopher, of which many fine im- 
pressions are extant to bear witness to its technical 
virtues. The average level of all the work of the year 
I51I is so astonishingly high, that it must be re- 
garded as the culminating period of the woodcuts, 
just as a slightly later time, the years 1513-14, wit- 
nesses the climax of the engravings. In the next few 
years Diirer’s time was much taken up with carry- 
ing out the emperor’s important but rather tiresome 
commissions for the Triuamphal Arch and two Trt- 
umphal Cars, the small one which forms a part of 
the Procession, and the much bigger affair, with the 
twelve horses and allegorical retinue, which did not 
appear until 1522. All this group offers a rich field 
of research to the antiquary, but is simply unintelli- 
gible without a learned commentary, and appeals 
much less than the sacred subjects to the average 
collector and lover of art, who cannot unearth the 


38 


THE MASS OF ST. GREGORY, I511 


Size of the original woodcut 1134 x 8% inches 
From a proof, on High Crown paper, formerly in the 
F. von Hagens Collection, in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


SAINT CHRISTOPHER, I5 a 8 
Size of the original woodcut 8°46 x 8% inches 
From a proof, formerly in the Paul Davidsohn Collection, 
in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


heaps of pedantic Latin and German literature in 
which the motives by which Durer was inspired, if 
I may use the word, lie buried. Inspiration certainly 
flagged under the influence of Wilibald Pirkheimer 
and other learned humanists who encouraged Max- 
imilian in his penchant for allegory, and compelled 
Durer, probably somewhat against his will, to use a 
multitude of symbols, intelligible only to the learn- 
ed, instead of speaking directly to the populace in 
the familiar pictorial language derived from the old 
tradition but enriched and ennobled by his own 
matchless art. 

The later woodcuts are comparatively few in 
number. They include a few that are primarily of 
scientific interest, such as the celestial and terrestrial 
globes and the armillary sphere, besides the numer- 
ous illustrations to Durer’s own works on Measure- 
ment, Proportion and Fortification. But among 
them are the two splendid portraits made from 
drawings now in the Albertina, the Emperor Maxz- 
milian of 1518 and the Ulrich Varnbiiler of 1522. 
Of the fofmer several varieties exist, from no less 
than four different blocks, and it is now established 


41 


that the only original version is the very rare one in 
which the letters “‘ae”’ of the word, ““Caesar’’ are dis- 
tinct, not forming a diphthong and placed within the 
large ““C.” The other cuts are all copies, produced 
probably at Augsburg, the fine large one, with an 
ornamental frame and the imperial arms supported 
by griffins, being indisputably the work of Hans 
Weidlitz. Only three impressions of the original are 
known, in the British Museum, the Berlin Kupfer- 
stichkabinett, and the Hofbibliothek at Vienna, in 
addition to which the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Paris 
possess a fragment damaged by fire at the time of 
the Commune, when it was still in private hands. It 
is more generally known that the handsome chiar- 
oscuro impressions of the Varnbiiler date, like those 
of the Rhinoceros, from the seventeenth century, the 
color blocks having been added in Holland. The 
brown and green varieties belong to different edi- 
tions, distinguished by the wording of the publish- 
er’s address at the foot, which in the majority of 
cases has been cut off. 

The Virgin with the many Angels, of 1518, is 


one of Diirer’s most accomplished woodcuts, and 


42 


VLRICHVS VARNBVLER-ZC.MDXXII2, 


ULRICH VARNBULER, 1522 


Size of the original woodcut 17 x 13 inches 
From a proof, in the first state (before the damage to the 
left eye), in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


adh Chriffuc gepurt.¢1z. Far. Adi.f. ay, Sat msn dent grofmedtigen Bunig von Portugal Enraudl gar LyfaSona prachtanf Fndia/cin Pollidy eendig Thier. Das neanen fie 
Nburocersa.D.rs ft yemic aller ferer geftal Ipebdicee state doen ra wie pramcabe ens otra Didift v6 dala ‘Sebhaten ¢ Faft fot, Dad if in der qrdf alo der Modfande 
Wer mydererechtiger von paynen/ ond fff rwerhajfrig, Es hac an fdparff (karct Hor vow auf der nafeu/ Das Geqyunds co alGeg yu wear wo cb Boy ftaynen Das dolig Chier if oes elf? 
Fann tode fegtide. Der delfFande firrdyt 3 faft wbel/Sane wo coFn anFumsbe fo Lau|ft Im dao Chier mie dem Lope srnifchen dye fordernt paynt ond reyft den Celffande onder ant pauch aulf 
vai crnvibrgge Jn/ Deo mag e fidy me erwernt. Dann das Chier iff al gerwapent/das_jm Der Selffanrde micheo Ban chun, Sue fagen audy das der Whynocerus Sdynell/ Sraydig wnd Lifkig icy. 


Isis 


¢ RHINOCERVS 


THE RHINOCEROS, 1515 
Size of the original woodcut 83% x 1154 inches 


‘‘The rhinoceros was presented by the Sultan of Guz- 
erat (or King of Cambay, as the Portuguese writers 
call him) to Diogo Fernandez de Béja. . . . It is 
quite likely, therefore, that the rhinoceros may have 
arrived at Lisbon in 1 May, 1515, the year in which 
Direr made the drawing, and in which the woodcut 
was published.”’ CampBELL Dopcson 


From a proof of the first edition, with the heading in 
five lines, on paper with watermark of an anchor in 
circle, in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


quite good impressions of it are comparatively com- 
mon today. The latest of his compositions of this 
class, the Holy Family with Angels, of 1526, is, on 
the other hand, extremely rare. Some critics doubt 
its being an authentic work of Diirer, but in spite of 
certain rather eccentric and unpleasant peculiarities 
in the drawing, I consider this scepticism unfounded. 
Quite at the end of Diirer’s life comes that rather 
fascinating subject, The Siege of a Fortress, unique 
among Durer’s woodcuts in the tiny scale on which 
its countless details are drawn. Of the many her- 
aldic woodcuts and ex-libris attributed by Bartsch 
and others to Durer, very few can be regarded as his 
genuine work, and most of them are very rare. The 
best authenticated are his own coat of arms; the 
arms of Ferdinand I in the book on Fortification; 
those of Michel Behaim, of which the block is ex- 
tant with a letter written by Durer on the back; the 
arms of Roggendorf, mentioned in the Netherlands 
Journal, of which only one impression is known, and 
the arms of Lorenz Staiber, of which the original 
version is also unique. There can be no doubt that 


the Ebner book-plate of 1516 is by Durer; the much 
45 


Cnty 
ogg YT TS SSS 
«ns fants, —— 


il 


Size of the original woodcut 754 x 5% inches 
From a proof, on High Crown paper, formerly in the 
A. Artaria Collection, 
in the possession of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


SALOME BRINGING THE BAPTIST’S HEAD TO 


HEROD, I511 


Size of the original woodcut 75% x 5% inches 
From a proof in the possession of 
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. 


earlier Pirkheimer book-plate is intimately connect- 
ed with the illustrations to the book by Celtes, and 
cannot be regarded as a certain work of the master 
himself, while the arms of Johann Tschertte are also 
doubted. 

It is a fortunate circumstance for the museums 
and collectors of today that Dtrer’s prints have al- 
ways been esteemed, and his monogram was held in 
such respect and so generally recognized as a mark 
of something good that they have been preserved 
during four centuries, while so much that was in- 
teresting was allowed to perish because it was un- 
signed or its signature was not recognized as the 
work of any one important. It may be paradoxical 
to say that Dirers are common; few of them are to 
be had at any particular moment when one wants to 
get them; but they are commoner than any other 
prints of their period, and a large number of im- 
pressions of some subjects must come into the mar- 
ket in the course of every ten years. But the sort of 
Diirer the collector wants, the really beautiful, fresh, 
clean impression, with the right watermark and 
genuine, unbroken border-line, is not, and never 


48 


has been, common. It is surprising how few, even of 
the famous museums of Europe, have a really fine 
collection of the woodcuts, perhaps because so many 
of them were formed some generations ago in un- 
critical times, when people were apt to think it 
enough if the subject was represented, in whatever 
condition it might be. The first-rate proofs are 
scarce, and getting scarcer every year; when they 


are to be had, they should be grasped and treasured. 


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